Google’s Wind Power Surge

These advantages become clearer in the case offshore wind power, which seems to be the company’s focus. The wind is stronger offshore, and about half the world’s population lives on the coast, so less energy would be lost in transmission. But it’s really hard to put a windmill in the ocean: you have to anchor it to the floor, so you’re stuck in shallow water, and corrosion from salt water and damage from waves make maintenance expensive. If you could launch these things from, say, a floating buoy, you could solve a lot of problems at once. Also, as the company points out, you could fly them out of sight of land, eliminating the aesthetic concerns that have dogged offshore windmills in the past.